


good friends

by edgaristheoneinthehole



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-18 09:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1424284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgaristheoneinthehole/pseuds/edgaristheoneinthehole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were the five of them and then him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. They Dont End Up Together

**Author's Note:**

> have this thing i wrote for april fools

It started with a random question a fan asked, just a simple; “Who do you like best in Achievement Hunter?” that made his head spin. Because, theoretically, the answer should have been Geoff, the one he’d had the biggest crush on for years, the one whose laughter filled him with such warmth, from his toes to his heart, the one who made everything okay. Reality wasn’t that simple, however, as his thoughts strayed from Ryan’s nervous sounding laughter to Ray’s nervous habit of speaking from the left side of his mouth. All of his (the, he meant the, they weren’t his) boys’ small habits, everything that made them, well, them.

During a Thursday, lying in bed at three in the morning, Jack Pattillo realised that he didn’t feel anything even remotely platonic towards his co-workers.

* * *

Gavin and Ryan weren’t at all sneaky and them trying to hide their relationship was one of the most hilarious things Jack had ever seen in his life. Gavin wrote _lovely Ryan_ on Ryan’s little desk for fuck’s sake!

But, Jack smiled to himself just thinking of those two, he was happy for them and they wouldn’t be Gavin and Ryan if they didn’t do everything as a big spectacle, even when trying to hide.

Michael and Ray, however, took Jack a long time to notice. He wouldn’t have noticed at all, in fact, if it wasn’t for Michael getting drunk off his ass one day and, when he leaned so very close to Jack; whose heart definitely do somersaults and who did not close his eyes, waiting for a kiss that never happened, only to hear a whisper of “Ray is being a jealous baby again,” from a giggling Michael.

“What do you mean?” he’d asked, pushing away all feelings of disappointment, clinging to the curiosity he felt.

Michael laughed loudly like he always did drunk but, when he spoke, the slur of his words was almost not noticeable: “He’s a busta.”

That, of course, just made him start giggling once again. Jack, maybe a little bit too drunk himself, joined him.

(Later, when Ray’s hands found themselves wrapped around Michael’s torso, claiming it was a special hug meant to help sober up, Jack was certain he didn’t imagine Ray pressing a quick kiss on the underside of Michael’s chin. Surprisingly enough Michael didn’t have a horrible hangover the next day.)

* * *

When Jack saw Geoff kiss Michael in front of Ray, he remembered that night and actually feared for Geoff’s life because, boss or no, Ray was vicious when angry. Instead Ray laughed, mock-whispering: “No kiss for the Puerto Rican? That’s racist, Geoff. Don’t worry though, I’m use to it.”

It looked like he was going to continue but, before he could, Geoff had silenced him with a kiss. Michael laughed in the background whilst Jack, Gavin and Ryan watched the sight, baffled.

(It would be Michael, with a grin on his face, who explained what polyamory was. Jack would swallow down the hope blossoming in his chest, congratulating the three.)

* * *

Three became five in a short amount of time, when Jack thought about it. He was happy for them, he _was,_ but a feeling in his chest seemed to make that happiness dim. He ignored it though, continuing on with his life.

After a while, the feeling didn’t just diminish the happiness, it started to suffocate him, like it wanted his whole existence to only focus on that one thing and, when he learned that it seemed to be that strong when he was with the others, the amount of times when he visited Joel or Burnie or _anyone_ started to sky-rocket. So much so that he started to only go into the office for videos. He even moved a laptop and chair near Joel’s, a testament of how much time he spent there.

Despite everything; it was Caiti, over a Skype call, who gently forced him to talk about what was wrong. The call was mostly Jack being confused about his feelings and then the rest being emotional but Caiti was wonderful, caring and everything she always was. Jack wondered how much easier his life would have been if he fell for her instead. She’d live in America, most likely, and Jack wanted that life; where he didn’t love five men who made his life confusing and Caiti, one of Jack’s closest friends, would be around all the time.

As it was, Caiti sounded sad when she informed him “you’re envious and hurt” and, thinking about it, yeah, he truly was. Caiti made everything better though, even if for a moment, so it was okay.

(She promised to hug him extra tight the time they met and Jack looked forward to it so much.)

* * *

Joel had wanted to go out drinking and Jack agreed to go, the conversation with Caiti still on his mind. He had to forget it because he couldn’t ruin the guys’ relationship. He couldn’t make everything awkward for them. They couldn’t know. Not ever.

Joel, however, left out the part that the rest of Achievement Hunters would be coming with, maybe purposely, maybe because Jack had never before needed a reminder that his co-workers were going out with them so he could say no. He couldn’t drop out though, not when Joel’s hand grasped his sleeve in a way that Jack could only describe looked painfully tight.

Maybe he really did leave out who came with them purposely.

Joel, for the lack of a better word, dragged Jack towards a booth and shoved him in it, forcing him to sit between Geoff and himself.

The rest of the guys joked and laughed and Jack genuinely had a good time and when he started to talk with them with more than one worded answers, Joel’s chest puffed out like a proud mother's would but Jack didn’t care because he could ignore all of his emotions when there was alcohol in him, he could act like he hadn’t realised he loved them yet, they were all just friends and he could pretend everything was fine.

That was, of course, until Michael pressed a kiss to Ryan’s cheek and the illusion shattered. Glancing at Joel, Jack immediately noted the narrowed eyes that the man eyed him with and, after placing a hand over his mouth and angling his face just right, the older man mouthed a ‘ _I get it,’_ and stood up.

“I’m leaving. Jack, I’m so winning that match,” he announced, looking amused at the groans from their boothmates. Jack, understanding that Joel was giving him a way out, soon found himself walking out of the bar. He expected it to only be an excuse but still ended up staying over at Joel’s, playing video games and watching movies until Joel fell asleep on the couch.

It felt like the old times and Jack appreciated his friend so much.

(They woke up their legs tangled, backs’ hurting and sweating but Jack couldn’t find it in himself to care.)

* * *

It was Geoff who cornered him, _of course_ it was, asking what his problem was because he was confusing and hurting the guys and Jack swallowed because he couldn’t cry.

But it hard not to because he’d loved Geoff for so long, way before any of the other guys had come into the picture, and he’d lived through Geoff being happy without him, being surrounded by ‘his boys’. He still remembered the late nights they just played video games together, no matter how shitty they were and he knew the exact time they stopped happening (both the date and the fact it was Geoff and Ray’s sixth individual date and Jack had smiled, saying that it was okay to miss one and then everything always came up and he stopped waiting for Geoff to show up at the office because neither of them could ever choose which house to stay over at). Jack remembered a lot of things Geoff had forgotten, it seemed.

“Just,” Geoff paused, moving his eyes away from Jack, taking in the surrounding room, the Achievement Hunter office, and Jack hated irony so much, “what did I do wrong?”

And suddenly the dam broke because Geoff hadn’t done a thing wrong, Jack just fell from the wrong person and then acted like an asshole to them because his feelings got in the way and it wasn’t Geoff’s fault that Jack fell in love with him and his boyfriends.

“I love you,” he rushed out, watching Geoff’s eyes fly to his form, startled, “I love you and the guys and I’m sorry.”

Geoff stood there for a long time, muttering something before he started talking: “I-”

But Jack had known Geoff for a long time, knew that tone, had seen him use it on fans. The I’m-sorry-but-I-can’t-do-that voice that suddenly made Jack’s stomach fall and he really didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear how Geoff didn’t feel the same way or, if he did, how the boys mattered to him more.

“It’s okay,” he interrupted, “You don’t have to love me back. I just wanted to tell you.”

Maybe escaping to Joel’s office afterwards was cowardly but Joel didn’t ask questions, even let Jack call Caiti from his laptop and Jack appreciated his friends so much it hurt because Caiti just offered distractions and didn’t force him to talk about anything.


	2. Still

It was Lindsay who came up to him, in the kitchen on a Friday afternoon, something like annoyance in her gaze, hands crossed. “He didn’t mention it, did he?” she sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat, “it’s been three weeks.”

Ray blinked, confused and wary, as it would take a lot for Lindsay to act the way she was then, questioning what she meant.

As it turned out, Lindsay had been ready to enter the Achievement Hunter office, around three weeks before, when she heard talking. She had put her hands on the link, had already pressed it down before she understood what Geoff had asked the other in the room. A simple demand of why Jack had been ignoring the rest of the team. Lindsay had planned to leave, she truly had, as she didn’t listen in on private conversations, but Jack’s answer, a confession, had made her freeze. When she heard moving in the room, she scrambled away from the door, making sure Jack wouldn't see her when he stormed off.

She hadn’t been so lucky as to Geoff not seeing her, his wide eyes staring into her own: “What are you going to do?” she had asked, watching the way his hands twisted into the fabric of his pants.

“Nothing,” he had answered, “I’m going to do nothing.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Geoff had paused, looking incredibly guilty, “because I don’t love him like he loves me. Or them.”

Lindsay then went on to explain that she and Geoff had a disagreement, her arguing that the rest of the guys should know whilst Geoff was violently against the whole idea of it. Finally, after something particularly stubborn left Geoff’s mouth, Lindsay had informed him that if he didn’t speak to the others in three weeks she would tell them herself and that was that, they hadn’t spoken about it since.

But, Lindsay frowned, three weeks had passed without Geoff ever mentioning it, she had to take matters into her own hands.

And, apparently, taking things into her own hands meant telling everything to Ray.

“Why me?” he questioned, finally starting the sandwich he entered the room for, “why not Michael?”

Lindsay hesitated, probably thinking up the answer in that moment, before shrugging: “You’re in the kitchen. Alone. Michael is in the Achievement Hunter office. With Geoff.”

“Makes sense,” Ray agreed, finally biting into his delicious sandwich.

* * *

The subject of that conversation didn't fully hit him until he was in his bed a few days later, Sunday, his bed awfully cold, despite the other people in it, compared to his chest at the thought of Jack liking them, liking _him_. So he flailed and moved around in his bed, something his bedmates complained about, until it was too late to go to bed, until it was the time he usually woke up, and went to work with a grin big enough that Michael called out on him ‘being as high as a diamond in the sky’ (to which everyone in the room started singing and Ray’s grin broadened).

* * *

Ray didn’t bring up the Jack subject until a few weeks later (and, actually, during those three weeks he was the happiest motherfucker in the whole world), during a lunch date with the guys, he’d been quiet enough, he thought, why not mention it to the rest?

“So, uh,” he stumbled over his words, after a lull in the conversation, “Jack, huh?” A longer silence started, during which his boyfriends’ faces were those of bafflement, that made Ray cough and blurt out the first thing on his mind: “ _Am I right?_ ”

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five seconds of silence.

“Oh my god,” Michael gasped, out, clutching his sides from laughter, “that was-” Gavin joined him not long after, his unique airish-giggles harmonising with the deeper sounds of his boi. Geoff was next, the laughter he was so known for mixing in with the others’ and it was finally Ryan who perfected the piece.

Ray smiled, mostly because it was hard to _not_ smile at their laughter, though he couldn't bring himself to laugh, nervousness twisting in his gut. The others seemed to realise that, eyes narrowed in concern and mouths drawn down in confusion. “Ray?” Geoff asked. Or was it Michael? Ryan? Did they all speak it together? Too hard to tell, to be honest.

Ray swallowed, looking into Geoff’s eyes, ones that would usually calm him down so easily but Ray only thought of brown ones, ones that certainly weren’t Michael’s as Ray knew Michael’s eyes _oh so_ well, and he stated “Lindsay spoke to me,” as calmly as he could.

Geoff froze, something that Michael, Gavin and Ryan looked at both of them curiously for, before clearing his throat: “What did she say?” and, when Ray’s answer was just a simple mention of Jack, Geoff moved his gaze away from Ray, wetting his lips.

“What’re we missin’?” Michael questioned, moving his head from one to the other before finally staring at Ray again, “you gonna tell me or?”

Ray paused, wondering how to explain Lindsay’s story with less words, half because it would take less time, half because, well, the feeling in his gut had not yet lessened. “Jack and- Jack confessed something to Geoff around, uh, around a month ago.” Michael made a gesture at that, one Ray assumed meant ’go on, master’. “A, well, love confession.”

“Oh?” Gavin squeaked, whilst Ryan asked a much more understandable, “is that so?”

“Yeah,” Ray nodded, not certain how to respond to those two questions, fuckin’ rhetorical questions, fuckin’ stupid boyfriends who ask rhetorical questions, “all five of us.”

One.

Two.

Thr-

“Huh,” Michael mused, “that’s. Something, I guess.”

Ryan and Gavin were both surprised, sure, but neither seemed to be filled to the brim with the same energy and warmth that Ray was at the idea, they didn’t seem to _want_ to change five to six.

Ray wondered if it was scientifically possible for a black hole to be created inside a person’s chest. He would have asked Ryan, R and R Connection after all, but suddenly looking at his boyfriends made the awful feeling inside him grow.

* * *

Wake up on the couch. Make an excuse for sleeping on the couch. Go to the bathroom and change clothes there. Walk to work, ignoring the food on the table. Wear headphones all day, if possible even when recording. Stay as late as possible at work. Walk home or drive with Monty. Arrive home. Play X-Box until dinner. Eat as little as possible at dinner to leave faster. Play X-Box until the others force him to bed. As soon as everyone falls asleep, go to the couch again.

Ray’s schedule wasn’t the best thing out there, of course, but it _helped,_ okay? Ignoring the others was better than letting the feelings in his chest grow. Better than a lot of things, really. Like leaving them. Hell, Ray wasn’t certain he _could_.

It was, however, logical that they’d corner him about it, they lived together for fuck’s sake, of course they’d notice.

“Ray,” Michael stated one late evening, whilst the younger man played X-Box next to him on the couch, “I know we use to be better friends but I’m not dumb, ya’ know.”

Ray glanced at the other, pausing his game, but didn’t speak up: “I mean, fuck, we use to be better everything. I didn’t use to hesitate before touching you, you wouldn't move away and kisses were the best fuckin’ ever.”

Michael laughed and Ray wondered how long it had sounded that bitter for, because he sure as hell didn’t remember Michael with the laugh Ray had first fallen in love with, over shitty-quality phone calls that had never given the laugh any justice: “Remember when we tried to watch Red versus Blue at the same time and you’d always start the video at two? So I had to try it earlier and it was a mess we never spoke of ever again? When we got to the third episode and you declared yourself the prettiest donut made of sunshine? Because you were obsessed with ray puns and ray of sunshine was your favourite because I told it to you?”

“Sunut,” Ray agreed, “I called myself Sunut.”

Michael paused at that, shaking his head: “Anyway, Ray, I’m not dumb. If you want to leave us you can, we’re not forcing you to stay.”

“No!” Ray argued, something that felt like desperation making his head snap towards the other, “I don’t want to leave!”

Michael, despite the slumping of his body, wound his left hand tightly around the remote, looking so fucking defeated yet frustrated at the same time: “Ray, what do you want from me.” Despite it being an obvious question, it was stated so monotonously that Ray had to hold back a wince.

“Nothing.”

“Ray, goddamn it, I just- what did I do wrong?”

It was a similar question, Ray thought, Lindsay had said Geoff had asked the same thing after all. And didn’t that situation end in disaster? With more sadness? More frustration?

“You’re right,” he sighed, making up his mind, “fuck it, I can’t do this. I can’t stare at you and not think of him also, I can’t kiss you and not wonder about him, I _can’t do it_. I can’t say ‘I love you’ without it feeling so utterly _fake_. So, yeah, I’m leaving.”

* * *

It wasn’t until the next morning that the rest of the guys found out about his decision, mostly because they’d been asleep whilst the argument took place, and, when Ray was editing a video, the whole fuckin’ parade of sorrowful anger that was Geoff Ramsey entered the room, locking on to Ray like a rocket. Which, Ray had learned, every man was.

(Goddamn it, let him have his jokes. He was pretty sure he was going to die, at least one dick joke must be made before Ray Narvaez Jr. dies.)

“You just,” he said, though something must have gotten caught in his throat as he coughed and started again, “you just said you’d leave to one of the people in the relationship. Not all. Just one. That’s a bigger dick move than over a text message.”

Some part of Ray, the part that still feared for his life, laughed at the dick part, desperate men laugh to stupid stuff. Though, to be honest, dick would never be unfunny. And he was as gay as gay went. A whole tv-show could be made about him: Gay. Because he didn’t need clarification, everyone knew that Gay was basically Ray Narvaez Jr.’s other name. And, hey, Barbara would like it.

“Ray!” he heard and, looking up, was rewarded with the sight of Geoff looking even more pissed off, “were you thinking about dicks or something?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he nodded, agreeing.

“I didn’t expect you to _agree_ ,” Geoff snorted, covering his mouth afterwards, muttering, “Ray, I swear to god, if this continues I won’t be able to be mad at you.”

 _Oh, please, let it continue,_ Ray thought, _I don’t want to die because I broke up with my boss._

“Was Michael right?” Ryan spoke up for the first time, looking up from the ground and into Ray’s eyes, like he always did, and Ray found himself looking away guiltily, as he was looking quite redrimmed. Ray nodded mutely.

“Can we,” Gavin, who sat on his desk, gripping the edges in a way that looked _so so_ painful, started, “can we at least all get an explanation? Not just- just Michael.”

Ray moved his gaze from Gavin, instead looking at Jack’s painfully dead-looking desk, as it always did without him: “I love him. I love him just as much as I love you. And it’s painful to be with you and without him. It doesn’t feel right without it being _six_.” He took a deep breath: “I can’t handle it. Do you know how painful it is to stare at an empty desk all day? And then he comes into the room and everything feels better because, even when we’re not together romantically, we’re still six.”

“So I’m leaving. Simple as that.”

Ray wondered if he was crying or if everyone else in the room were.

* * *

Ray moved in with Lindsay after that, an offer she had extended after hearing of the ‘OTFallout’, as the internet called it, and he was both grateful and bitter towards her. It was her reason everything started, nothing he could blame her for, she was only trying to help, after all, but the feelings stayed. Feelings were irrational. Feelings sucked.

Work continued like normal, Jack wasn’t in the office, Ray ignored the guys, both Jack and him didn’t speak. Really, the only thing that changed was the fact that he lived with Lindsay and wasn’t that sad, he had driven himself so far away from his (ex-)boyfriends that he hadn’t even kissed them when he _was_ dating them.

It appeared that Jack was late on the memo though, walking up to Ray one late evening, where he was forced to wait because Lindsay could drive and she was held up with editing, demanding: “What happened?”

“What?” certain the expression on his face was only blank, Ray stared at his co-worker.

“Why did you- You were so _happy_. And I never stood a chance. And I thought-”

“Wait, hang on for a sec. What?”

Jack moved his gaze away from Ray, staring at the wall behind him instead: “It’s just; _it was a month_ , Ray. I didn’t want to wait and he has always been there for me and then we got drunk and, well, it just happened.”

Ray frowned, wondering if the blank hole from before was residing within himself again: “Who is he?”

“Ah,” Jack paused, like he just realised he gave away a huge secret, “Joel.”

Yup, the black hole was back.

* * *

Living with Ray was one of the most stressful yet calming things Lindsay had ever done, calming because it wasn’t like he required much maintenance, hell, Lindsay’s cat required more maintenance, but stressful for that same reason. A grown man could only sleep for as much as he did to escape reality before his housemate got worried, after all.


End file.
